Linguistics

Linguistics

My day job is that I work as a linguistics doctoral student at the University of Arizona. Here are some things relevant to my work.

CV. (For those who like my CV style, I have the source .tex file here.)

Here is my Master's thesis. Written at the University of Georgia under the guidance of Vera Lee-Schoenfeld.

My Theoretical Program

The general theme behind my work in linguistics is replacing poor-functioning traditional syntactic theory with explanations of data driven by extra-linguistic cognitive properties. That means deriving linguistic tendencies, habits and alternations from interactions between prosody, semantics, speaker world-knowledge and "third factor" principles.

My Program differs from traditional Chomskyan syntax in one crucial area: while the typical Generative assumption assume that the language faculty's main (possibly only) business is constructing the hierarchical structure in language from raw materials (words/morphemes), I view the main prerogative of the language faculty as translating and interpreting pre-existing semantic schemas into sound (and vice versa). While much of the data accumulated in the past 60 years has proven interesting and still useful, most of the central theoretical questions of Generative Syntax I consider to be non-meaningful or wild goose chases given this difference.

The language faculty is an optimization scheme that takes the many varying and contradicting constraints of the motor system (sound), the semantic system and other processing constraints and using typical neural architecture, attempts to bridge the formal gaps between them, producing the sometimes vexing constructions of syntax. Ultimately, syntax is the interface. Different languages are merely different configurations of constraint orderings.

Random squibs

All of these papers I consider "unfinished" and are really about piquing interest, so feedback is welcome.

This is mostly a brief critique of the "Heuristics and Biases" program as popularized by Kahneman and Tversky as an approach to cognitive science, but also a critique of the more general tendency to prioritize Platonic forms over real-life function in science.

Here I propose that scope availability is a result of pragmatic implicatures, not any formal syntactic operation. I suggest scope, and other perplexing aspects of language aren't actually part of the "language faculty," but fall the world knowledge and assumptions of speakers. (A preliminary presentation of this)

Throwing some ideas out there about the evolution of word order, using the development Indo-European families as an example. The idea is that preferences for particle placement can cause verb movement overtime via univerbation or head movement. That is, languages that tend to place particles in initial position will move toward being VSO, languages that place particles in second position will move to being V2, etc.

Here I point out the formal parallel between Harmonic Serial phrase prosodification and the distribution of scope marking. I argue that scope marking is a kind of prosodic repair to rectify an imperfect local maximum achieved in a stochastic and serial derivation. Wh- words want to be prosodically unified with the position they take scope in, but if this is not possible due to independent reasons, scope marking appears as a repair.

Here I overview the many syntactic alternations of languages which are manifestly tied into phonological constraints, and note the problems that consensus Generative Grammar has with dealing with them.

Similarly to above, I overview phonological control of syntactic structure and here attempt to motivate it. Less complete.

Coming Presentations

I'm going to be talking about the evolution of the irregular imperfect in Romance languages, with an eye to how constraint-based analyses can be used to model diachronic change. This will be on February 23rd at the 28th Annual Graduate and Professional Symposium on Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literature, Language and Culture.

I'll present some of my work on Game Theoretic quantifier scope at a showcase for prospective students in our department on February 24th.

I'll be presenting a talk on Panini and Classical Indian linguistics, as well as other pre-Generative approaches to language in Simin Karimi's Major Works class in late March.